


New York Love Songs

by Aenaria



Series: I am Here, and I am Ready [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Dreamsharing, F/M, Sequel, Series, despite the title this isn't a songfic, more tags to be added as the story goes on - Freeform, this part of the story is more about the romance than anything else
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-25
Updated: 2016-03-25
Packaged: 2018-05-29 01:45:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6353941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aenaria/pseuds/Aenaria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summer in New York has been described in many ways: exciting, sweltering, vibrant, reeking from the pits of hell, exhausting, lively, and, as crazy as it makes people, it’s home.  It’s also the backdrop for the growing love story between Steve Rogers and Darcy Lewis.  There’s a little laughter, a little angst, a little magic, and a little romance.  Basically, it’s time to bring things out of the dreamscape and into the waking world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	New York Love Songs

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, it has taken me far longer than I had anticipated to get this next story in the Dreams series kicked off, but it’s here now, and I hope that it lives up to the wait! This piece is more going to be a series of vignettes and short stories that span the summer and leading up to a pretty big decision between our two heroes. If you’ve read the story in the series before this, Burn the Ground and Break from the Crowd, you’ll know what exactly what that big decision entails. However, if you haven’t, I won’t spoil it here. I’ll say this though: that previous piece doesn’t even come close to telling the full story. If you want to know more, stick around and see…
> 
> This story starts a month after ‘I’m Wide Awake (I’m not sleeping)’ and therefore about a month after the events of The Avengers. And one final reminder that Steve’s identity as Captain America is still secret in this universe because that’s how it was when I started the universe years back and I’m stuck with it now, lol.
> 
> My wholehearted thanks to all of the cheerleaders who helped out with this piece, especially Meri, Mcgregorswench, and DizzyRedhead for being patient enough with me and my insanity as I tried to shake this thing into shape.

June, 2012

 

_ Sometimes, Darcy Lewis knows, all you want to do is scream at the world.  That the world can be a crazy, evil, and unfair sort of a place.  That the best thing you can do is howl into the void loud enough and long enough for someone to hear what you’re saying.   _

 

_ And so, Darcy screams.  Earth shattering, bone crunching screams that crack the world with every echo, revealing the nothingness behind the sky and the land.  Green grass gives way to misty grey and then deep black that not even stars can fight their way out of.  The land beneath her feet crumbles and drops off in chunks, leaving gaping holes in the landscape like it’s been hit with heavy artillery. _

 

_ She feels hands strong on her shoulders, trying to pull her back against the warm body behind her.  “Darcy, sweetheart, you’ve got to wake up,” she hears Steve say, but it barely registers.   Instead she just struggles against him, writhing until she wrenches her shoulders out of his hands.  Darcy tips forward and crash lands on her knees, digging her nails deep into the dirt.   _

 

_ “Stupid, alien fuckers,” she mutters, clenching her hands until she’s sure blood is soaking the ground.  She screams again, a broken sob clawing its way out of her throat.  The wind whistles, rasping against her, and now she can feel the sudden absence of Steve behind her, sucked away by the wind to somewhere only the spirits know. _

 

_ Darcy howls again at the void, raging at something, anything, everything.  She can’t decide.  It’s easier to scream than to think about it. _

 

‘Darcy, come on.’

 

_ There’s a tugging at her back that she ignores.  Whatever it is, it’s not good, and she doesn’t want to give it any more power by acknowledging it.  ‘Just scream,’ she thinks. _

 

‘Sweetheart, wake up!’

 

Darcy’s breath catches in her throat as her eyes snap open, raspy and choking in her lungs.  The next thing she notices is the dull gleam of the skylight above her, the barest light of dawn breaking through the nighttime darkness.  Finally, Steve’s face comes into view, hovering above hers and slightly blurry from sleep and a lack of glasses.  His hands, warm on her face, help to ground her in the present more than anything else.  That’s when she groans, squeezing her eyes shut out of sheer embarrassment.  “Crap, I had another nightmare, didn’t I?”

 

“Yeah.”  One finger strokes gently along her cheekbone and she leans into it, following the warmth.  “It’s over now, though.”

 

It’s not like the nightmares were anything new, for either of them.  But ever since what the media’s been calling the ‘Battle of New York’, the ‘Alien Invasion’, ‘Attack on Manhattan,’ or any other witty epithet a month before it’s at least a couple of nights a week that one or both of them wakes up unable to breathe because of the images shared between their heads.  Par for the course, Darcy guesses, when you’ve lived through all of that weird shit up close and personal.  

 

Still, it helps that they’re both dealing with it and not just one of them.  It’s nice not to be alone in the insanity.  And it’s also easier to cope when they’re sharing the same bed, being able to wake the other up and then curl up together until the hearts stop racing and the brains are calm once more.  Darcy’s not quite sure why Steve would rather stay at her place, on the dinky little full sized mattress that can barely fit both of them and is half the size of the one back at his apartment, but more often than not they find themselves there.  When she asked Steve about it, he mentioned something about being too used to barracks living to go back to living on his own, but Darcy suspects there’s more to it than just that.

 

“It’s this stupid job interview,” Darcy mutters, rolling over and burying her face in Steve’s t-shirt.  “And it’s not even a real job, just for another temp agency, but there’s so many people out of work right now ‘cause their offices got leveled and what the hell makes me any more marketable than the rest of them?” she finishes in a rush of breath.  

 

Right, that was another casualty of the Battle: the job market in and around Midtown.  Due to structural damage by attacking aliens to the building where her agency was based out of, said agency was closed down indefinitely while they found a new location.  Meaning Darcy was shit out of luck when it came to getting work over the past month.  So it was back to pounding the pavement for employment and signing on with any number of temp agencies just to make some cash and not get evicted.  If they were even taking new applicants at the moment.  All of them were a bit overloaded trying to help out any number of out of work people since the attack.

 

Stupid job.  Stupid aliens.  Stupid stress driving her mad.

 

Man, my internal voice is whiny today, Darcy thinks ruefully.

 

“What time’s the interview?” Steve asks, running a gentle hand up and down her back.

“Eleven.  What time is it now?”

 

She feels him crane his head, looking at the little alarm clock on her night table.  “Four fifty-eight.”

 

“Shit.”  That’s not a humane hour to be awake, not at all, and especially since she doesn’t even have to think about getting ready until nine.  It’s not always easy to fall back asleep either.  Sometimes it takes a while to shake the images from the head and settle back down again.

 

But still, there’s a little bit of a bright side to all of this.

 

Darcy tilts her head up and presses a kiss to Steve’s throat.  She can feel the slight shudder run through him, and his hand flexes on her back.  “Well, while we’re awake and have alllllll morning to ourselves,” she mumbles against his skin.  One of her fingers glides along the waistband of his boxers, then dips below and traces the ridge of his hipbone.

 

“You know, S.H.I.E.L.D. did want me to go in for a meeting at some point today,” Steve says.  It’s a half-hearted protest, however, because just as he’s saying this he’s pulling her even closer against his body and tipping his head back so Darcy has unfettered access to the expanse of his neck.

 

“Yeah, a meeting for S.H.I.E.L.D. is exactly where your brain is right now.” Darcy leans forward, using her body to ease Steve down to the bed.  All right, she admits that she probably wouldn’t even be able to budge him if he didn’t want to move.  But given that he’s tugging her on top of him as he twists, she’s going to guess that he’s exactly where he wants to be right now.  She rolls her hips once, feeling the growing hardness beneath her.  When she sits up she runs her hands underneath his shirt and over Steve’s stomach, skin soft and sleep-warm.

 

Warm and vibrant, she thinks, flicking her eyes up to look at his face.  His eyes are closed, lashes dark on his cheeks, but there’s a constant small movement behind the lids, like he’s trying to see everything despite them.  His hands are on her hips, lightly pressing her down into him, and they’re equally as warm through the fabric of her shorts.  The air in the room is heavy and thick, a humid breeze sweeping in through the skylight and wrapping around them, just adding to the heat in there.  One of those little breezes must catch Steve in just the right way, because he shivers just a bit and opens his eyes to look at her.

 

Darcy gasps shallowly, her palms stilling on his skin.  “Last year, about this time,” she begins, tilting her head forward so that her hair covers her face.  There’s a certain vulnerability in what she’s thinking, the words that could come out of her mouth, and while she trusts Steve entirely, sometimes it’s not always easy to expose those little parts inside of her that still writhe with insecurity.  “I dreamt of you in the ice, you know.  Right here in this bed, when it was, like, stupid hot outside.  You were still, and blue, and I don’t even know if you were breathing.  And all I wanted to do was warm you up, but no matter how hard I tried nothing worked.”  She looks up at him, seeing his wide eyes and parted lips.  “Did you dream any of that also?”

 

Steve’s hands slide up her back, pulling her closer so that her hair falls in a curtain around them, shielding them from the rest of the world.  “I don’t really remember anything from the ice.  Maybe a few hazy images, but nothing I could put my finger on when I woke up.”  He sighs, and she can feel the movement of his chest against hers.  “I remember crashing.  Just this...bone-jarring impact.”  Even in the low light Darcy can tell that his eyes have gone distant, lost in that singular, defining moment.  “I was thrown out of my seat, hit the console.”  Steve shakes his head, glancing up at her.  “That was it.  Nothing after that until I woke up at S.H.I.E.L.D.  Even then I wasn’t sure if I was awake or if I’d died.  That took a little more time to accept.”

 

She darts in to steal a kiss from him.  “Well, I for one am glad that you’re awake.  That you’re here, with me, right now in the 21st century...in this shitty little room in a bed that we’re going to break any day now.”

 

(It’s not a lie.  The frame creaks ominously every time one of them rolls over in bed, let alone during other activities.  Still, it came with the room, so Darcy figures she can’t be too choosy.)

 

Her words have the intended effect and a sunny smile spreads across Steve’s face, and he brings her in for another kiss.  “Last year at this time I was stuck under a giant block of ice.  Or in the middle of a war zone, ‘least in my memories.  How the hell did I end up here?” he asks, bemused.

 

“Just lucky, I guess.”

 

“That’s for damn sure.”

 

“Maybe someone really, really likes you.”  Darcy presses her mouth to his once more, tongue flicking at his lower lip, just enough to make him shudder once more.  “You should know that I really, really like you,” she whispers against his skin.

 

Steve’s hands slide down to her ass, just as he arches up into her.  “Kinda figured that,” he mumbles back.

 

Things go hazy after that as pajamas are shucked, tossed off the side of the bed with easy abandon.  It’s all too easy for Steve to roll them over in the small bed, pressing Darcy down into the mattress.  She relishes the weight on top of her, how everything about him fills her senses as she surges up to kiss him.  Her legs twine around his waist, and with unexpected strength she pulls him close.  

 

She muffles her moans in his shoulder as he slides inside her.  Even in this old monstrosity of a building the interior walls are thin, and the roommates don’t need to know everything about her romantic life, even though they’ve almost gotten used to having Steve around these days.  It’s not really about being vocal, however, but more about being right there in the moment, when the world becomes just the two of them and nothing else really matters.  

 

\----------

 

The fun part of the morning passes all too quickly for Darcy’s taste, and it’s not long before she finds herself pacing around the sidewalk in front of the building where this new temp agency is located, wearing the best interview dress and heels that she owns, and practically carving out a groove into the polished concrete as she moves back and forth.  At least this is New York, and between the mess of crowded and crooked streets this far downtown around Wall Street and the ingrained tendency of the locals to try as hard as they can not to be plussed by anything that’s relatively out of the ordinary, no one gives her slight mental breakdown a second glance.  Steve had tried to calm her down before he left for his S.H.I.E.L.D. meeting, but even he had a limited amount of time before he had to get his ass up to Midtown and the headquarters there.  “Abandoning me in my time of need,” Darcy mutters, without any sort of heat.  They’re meeting up for lunch after her interview anyway; she can lean on him then.

 

She totally blames the nerves for her grumpiness, and knows that she needs to rein it in big time before the interview begins.  Darcy takes a deep breath, looking up at the looming beige-grey facade in front of her.  “Let’s do this thing,” she tells herself, thinking that if she says it enough maybe she’ll start to believe it.

 

\----------

 

The meeting with S.H.I.E.L.D. is...well, it’s not exactly how Steve would be spending his morning if he chose to.  The first hour was a session with a psychologist (which, while technically mandatory before, had been upped to ‘forget highly encouraged, Rogers, you are showing up to your sessions or I’m dragging you to them by the hair,’ by Fury after the battle of Manhattan).  When he comes out feeling a bit like he’s been dragged over gravel by a tank, he spots Clint sitting there in the waiting room, flipping through a magazine with a frown on his face.  He doesn’t say a word, just nods in Steve’s direction.

 

Steve nods back, then proceeds on to his next equally dull meeting.  This meeting is yet another debrief of the events during the Chitauri attack, with both Fury and Hill there.  At least this time Steve is more of a spectator than anything else, though he is asked to confirm or deny certain occurrences.  He’s dismissed after another hour, and he sure as shit isn’t hanging around any longer.

 

On his way out of the building he runs into Clint again.  “Hey, man, how are you doing?” Clint says, coming to a halt in the atrium of the building.  They both stand out from the crowd of agents running around them in suits and ties, Steve notes, glancing down at his much more casual button down and slacks and Clint’s jeans and t-shirt.

 

“I’m okay,” Steve says.  Clint looks...all right, he thinks, but there’s a certain dullness in his face and a tightness around his eyes that says that he’s still trying to cope with everything.  What must it be like, to have your control taken from you so badly?  “You?”

 

Clint’s mouth opens, but then his eyes move, following after an agent who passes behind them a little too closely.  Steve looks at the crowd milling around them, feeling like he’s being stared at himself, and tamps down the worry.  “Come on, let’s go for a walk,” Steve says, motioning towards the tall glass doors that look out on the busy Manhattan street.

 

“God, yes.”

They make their way down the street, past the crowds milling outside the theaters, and turn onto 8th Avenue.  The noise of the city carries them through, spares them from any awkward conversation.  Then again, Steve understands full well the desire to NOT talk about what’s bothering him.  Clint’s a master of deflection, however, as the first words out of his mouth after a couple of minutes are, “So how’s the 21st century treating you?”

 

Steve just shakes his head with a rueful laugh.  “It’s interesting so far,” he says.  

 

“Not what you expected?”

 

And isn’t that the understatement of his lifetime.  Nothing he’s seen or experienced is anything like he’d ever imagined the future to be.  “I was expecting more flying cars.” 

 

All right, it’s not the most in-depth answer he’s got, but it’s easier to verbalize that statement when compared to the enormity of everything that’s happened to him since he got the serum, since he had that first dream with Darcy, since he put the plane in the ice.

 

“I think S.H.I.E.L.D. may have a prototype in cold storage somewhere,” Clint muses, sidestepping a tourist with camera pointed upwards, totally ignoring everything that’s happening on the ground level.  “There’s a lot of things they’re hiding though.”

 

“Ain’t that the truth.”  Steve glances up at the buildings above them, rising high into the sky in a mix of familiar and entirely new architecture.  This part of the city hasn’t been as affected by the attack, not enough structural damage to close down the streets.  Every so often though there’s a memorial, flowers and pictures clustered around a stoop or by an entrance. It’s a sobering sight.  “Is that typical for S.H.I.E.L.D.?” he asks. 

 

Clint shrugs. “Homeland security’s full of secrets; it’s the nature of the beast.  And up until now S.H.I.E.L.D.’s operated in the shadows.  Couldn’t exactly tell you what’s happening now, though. I’m not exactly in their good books anymore.”

 

“They’re not blaming you for what happened while Loki was controlling you, are they?” Steve says, frowning.  “Because that was not your fault.  Loki’s a bastard who would use anyone in his way for his own ends without regard.”

 

“Not in so many words.  But you saw how the other agents were staring.  Even if the higher ups don’t blame me the agents do.”  Clint shakes his head.  “I got a lotta thinking to do about what happens next.”

 

“I can understand that.  I’m not sure where I’m going next either.”  Fury had been especially closed lipped about what happens next when Steve had asked him about it a week earlier, telling Steve enough to keep him hanging in there while giving him absolutely no information at all. Frustrating is a mild word for it, and apparently Darcy had taken a rather impressive video of him decimating another heavy bag as he took his frustrations out on it. 

 

“Yeah, speaking of, where are we headed now?” Clint asks, glancing at the street signs as they pass by the intersection of W. 40th and 8th Avenue. 

 

“I’m meeting a friend for lunch.  Said we’d meet up on the stairs of the big post office outside Penn Station,” Steve says, grinning at the surprised look on Clint’s face.  “I’ve been awake for almost six months now; is it that surprising that I’ve made friends in the meantime?”  Okay, to be fair, it’s surprised Steve too.  He hadn’t been expecting to find anything or anyone he could relate to in the new century, but then again he hadn’t expected to see the girl from his wartime dreams walking down the street one cold and icy night either.  And even though Darcy is entirely modern, a product of the times that he’d slept through, there’s something of home about her that he loves. 

 

Loves?  Oh, boy.  

 

Clint just gives him a smirk back.  “No, but sometimes it’s hard to reconcile the fact that once you get past the whole legend of…”  He glances around at the crowd on the streets around them.  They’re obviously not paying attention to two men walking down the street, but who knows who could be eavesdropping.  “...you know who, that you’re just some guy who’s the same age as all of those hipster shits out in Williamsburg.”

 

“Actually, they set me up with a place in DUMBO.”

 

“Why am I not surprised?”

 

There are any number of people wandering around the streets in between Madison Square Garden and the post office - it’s a sunny, warm day and not even an alien attack a month prior could shut New York entirely down.  These people are also the ones treating the giant steps outside the post office as a lunch area, place to rest their feet, take a quick nap even, or just warm their face in the sun.  It’s all too easy for Steve to spot Darcy sitting there towards the bottom of the steps, professional looking sweater half hanging out of her messenger bag and heels swapped out for a pair of flip flops.  Large, rounded sunglasses cover her eyes, which are trained down at her cellphone as her fingers dance over the screen.

 

But like she’s got a second sense that tells her whenever he’s nearby, Darcy looks up from her phone as he and Clint approach, smiling widely enough to match the sun and wave in their direction.

 

“A friend, huh?” Clint mutters.  Steve just gives him a glare that he hopes is more ambiguous than anything else.

 

“You brought company with you,” Darcy says, scrambling to her feet as they get close.  She’s a couple of steps above them, which makes her tower over Steve for once, and she grins down at them with a flash of teeth.

 

“Yeah.  Clint, this is Darcy.  She lives in the apartment building next door to mine.  Darcy, this is Clint, a...a, uh - “

 

“Co-worker,” Clint breaks in easily, sticking out his hand for Darcy to shake.  “Good to meet you,” he says.

 

“Likewise,” Darcy replies.  “Are you coming to lunch with us?”

 

Shit, Steve definitely didn’t think that far ahead.  Is it too late to offer?  Would it be impolite not to?  How do people handle situations like these now anyway?  Hell, it’s not like he was good at it before, navigating tricky social situations, what makes him think that nearly seventy years under the ice would actually  _ improve _ things?

 

Luckily for his sake, Clint’s a lot more adept than he is.  “No, I’ve actually got a train to catch,” he says, waving a hand in the general direction of the Garden.  “It’s been good to meet you, though.  Steve, I’ll see you around,” he says, giving Steve’s hand a firm shake before heading towards one of the many subway entrances clustered around the base of the Garden.

 

Darcy turns to Steve, her eyebrows arching over the rims of her sunglasses.  “A co-worker?”

 

“Yup.”

 

“As in one of the people you...you know, with?”

 

Steve nods, looking a lot more solemn than he’s actually feeling then and there, which he’s convinced is entirely Darcy’s influence.

 

“Awesome,” Darcy says with an exhale.  She weaves her arm through his, pulling him closer to her side.  “So, what are you in the mood to eat for lunch?

 

\----------

 

The rest of the day passes slowly, in that languid sort of way that happens when there’s nothing pressing awaiting you.  Lunch is enjoyed leisurely at a little hole in the wall place that didn’t take credit cards and served food on small boards of shale, odd enough and good enough to distract from discussions of job interviews that were more depressing than anything else.  The boring necessities of laundry and cleaning out that shared bathroom with the sink that’s always just on the wrong side of working properly come next.  And then it’s night time, and they retreat to Darcy’s little bedroom again, lounging on the bed and dozing off to the sound of whatever movie’s playing on her laptop.

 

Darcy’s quieter than usual, Steve notes, eyes flicking in her direction whenever he thinks she isn’t looking.  She’s lying stretched out on the bed, head turned to where the laptop is propped up on the night table, with her legs draped over Steve’s.  He’s sitting against the wall himself, making it all too easy to look at both Darcy and the movie at the same time.  The interview was weighing on her, he knew.  It hadn’t been terrible, but it had left her with the feeling that she was just one amongst a large number of people rather than an actual job prospect.  But sometime between the cleaning and the laundry and the cuddling she’d gone unusually quiet, lost in thought somewhere.

 

Steve’s not exactly sure what he should do now, if he should do anything at all.  Hell, what if he’d done something?  So instead he just sits there and watches the movie, his hand trailing up and down her bare legs every so often.

 

“Am I your girlfriend?” Darcy blurts out, eyes trained on little computer screen.   

 

And of all the things, that is definitely not something he’d expected on hearing come from her mouth.  Steve frowns, and looks down at her.  “What do you mean?”

 

Darcy sighs, chews on her lower lip like she’s about ready to tear a layer of skin off.  Finally she rolls her head on the pillow to look over at him.  “It’s just...something I’ve been thinking about since Clint this afternoon.  Like, we’ve been what we are for a month now, and things are amazing.  And when you introduced me, I was someone who lived in the apartment next to yours.  Like, all of a sudden I’d been reduced to just a neighbor.”

 

Steve knows he should say something, anything, but instead he just slumps over next to her, head on the pillows just a few inches away from Darcy’s.  The position’s a bit awkward, with her legs still bending up and over his curled legs, but he has to be close to her right now.  “I didn’t say it to brush you aside, or to make you mad?  I...had to think fast and it was the first thing that came to mind.”

 

“But why?” Darcy asks.

 

He sighs, runs a hand up her side.  She doesn’t flinch away from his touch, but instead snuggles closer to him.  “Clint’s career S.H.I.E.L.D.  He’s a good guy, and after the battle I trust him to have my back in any fight.  But he said it himself, right before we met up with you: S.H.I.E.L.D. is full of secrets.  Hell, it took Stark breaking into the computer system and me breaking into a storage room for them to actually admit they’d been using the Tesseract to create weapons out of.”

 

“I saw how they acted in New Mexico,” Darcy says softly.  “Everything of Jane’s got confiscated until they determined she could be useful to them.  And yeah, not all of the agents were bad people, but they’re all about the job.”

 

“And I don’t want them bothering you in the name of the job.”  

 

“What, do you think they’re going to disappear me in a black hole or something?” Darcy arches her eyebrows over her glasses, her face looking none too thrilled at the implications.  “S.H.I.E.L.D. may have a bunch of prizes working for them but I don’t think they’d go that far.”

 

“Why take a chance?”  Words have never been Steve’s strongest skill, ever, but he hopes that Darcy understands what he’s trying to say.  “I want you by my side more than anything else.  So if that means I let them think that you’re just my neighbor, at least for now, then I won’t disabuse them of the notion.”

 

Darcy smirks, tapping her finger on his chin.  “Has anyone ever told you that you have a major melodramatic streak?”

 

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Steve admits sheepishly.

 

“You know, we never had that talk about our relationship that we said we were going to a month ago,” Darcy says, bringing the conversation back around to where they’d first started.

 

“No, we haven’t.”

 

“I think we spent too much time in here and making my roommates run for the earplugs instead.  But we probably should talk.”  She reaches out, gently strokes a knuckle along his cheekbone.  “It doesn’t have to be complicated.  I just...okay, some people like labels, and I want to be able to, to call you my boyfriend, my partner in crime, my...mine, in front of the world and anyone who asks about you.”  Darcy squeezes her eyes closed, head dipping until her hair’s brushing against his face.

 

Her words are enough to unfurl the knot that’s been building up in his stomach since this conversation started, suffusing him with a warmth that he doesn’t feel anywhere near enough these days.  “I want you to be mine too,” Steve whispers.  “Step out with me, be my girlfriend, and everything else.”  Now those words, they come a lot more easily than he could have imagined, tongue loosened just like that knot inside him.

 

Darcy pulls back, lips quirked and eyes smiling brightly enough to push back any burgeoning darkness.  “Good,” she says, kissing the tip of his nose.  “See, that wasn’t that hard, was it?”

 

“Hmm.  You know, I can show you something else that’s hard, if you want.”

 

The groan’s loud enough to echo throughout the small bedroom, and Darcy rolls her eyes mightily.  “Okay, maybe we should just stop with the words, because that was certified awf--”

 

Steve effectively cuts her off, head dipping forward to kiss her firmly, and any words are put to the side for the immediate future.

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this chapter is probably the most dour line in an otherwise upbeat, sunny, and cheery song - one of the cheeriest I’ve ever heard and so I can’t recommend it enough if you need a mood lifter. The song is called ‘The Pop Singer’s Fear of the Pollen Count’, by The Divine Comedy, and can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFs261AKUZc
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
